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CLCS Protocols 2024-2025

Organizers are invited to develop programming that responds to the Department’s CAARES initiatives (Committee for Antiracism, Accessibility, Respect, Equity and Social Justice).

The Department and the University encourage face to face events while asking organizers to keep in mind questions of accessibility and flexibility.

  • All events must be held on or before 11 April 2025 so that final bookkeeping can occur before the University deadline of 1 June 2024.
  • Because the University will switch to a new payment processing system, ELEVATE, we ask that no events requiring honoraria, travel reimbursements, or other expenditures, be scheduled between 1 November 2024 and 1 February 2025.
  • Please include your project code on requests associated with payments or funding

Planning steps to host an event:

  1. Scheduling: If your event meets face-to-face, inquire about room availability before you make arrangements with your speaker, and reserve one of these rooms by contacting ENGLMEO@umd.edu. When you make your room request, especially for 2115, please indicate how you want the furniture in the room to be configured. If you are planning a virtual event, please confirm that your event does not conflict with something else being hosted within the department (see the calendar). Tawes 2115 and 2119E (conference room in MEO) now have cameras installed to facilitate hybrid events. We also have two portable Owl videoconferencing systems for limited use in other rooms (best for fewer than 10 participants).
  2. Event listing: Submit information for the Department Calendar to Karen Nelson and Chloe Kim via this form. In addition to the event date, time, title, and location or registration link, please provide details about the speaker and offer a brief description of the event. The information you submit will appear on the department’s website and will be used to generate publicity for monitors in the building and for social media. If you have questions, please email knelson@umd.edu
  3. Honoraria: Program organizers may use their budgets at their own discretion. CLCS currently recommends that for virtual events, the threshold for honoraria be a minimum of $250 and events be limited to one hour in length. For hybrid or face to face events, the recommended minimum threshold for honorarium per speaker is $500. Business office forms are linked here. Information about generating a contract and an overview of the payment process is available from the Business Office via this link. A template honorarium letter is available linked here. Please note: honoraria payments cannot be processed until the event has occurred; they typically take 8-10 weeks from that date to wend their way through the system. We anticipate that with the campus adoption of ELEVATE, we will be unable to process requests submitted between 1 November and 31 January.
  4. Travel: Information about Guest Travel is here. Please note that cancelling hotel reservations may not incur costs, but airline tickets are less likely to be refunded, and the Department does not reimburse travel expenses for a visitor who does not come to campus. 
  5. COVID guidelines: The University’s current COVID guidelines are available here
  6. Accessibility: For Zoom events, please enable closed captioning. For hybrid events, please ask the speaker to provide an accessibility copy of the talk.
  7. Recording: For virtual webinar events, secure permission from the speakers prior to recording the event. Consult with CLCS to see whether light video editing is available. Budget for providing the closed captioning required by UMD for ADA compliance. For hybrid events, recording is complicated by a number of factors, including audience permissions.
  8. Hybrid events via OWL: Reserve the OWL projectors with the Main English Office (englmeo@umd.edu). Set-up instructions are available here. You will want to generate a zoom link, possibly with zoom registration, for your event. Questions? Contact Karen Nelson (knelson@umd.edu) to figure out how to set up a hybrid event.
  9. Books: If your event budget includes an order for books, please submit a purchase request form (linked here) to the Business Office.
  10. Catering: The Business Office provides a list of approved catering providers here. You can also work with Campus Catering / Dining Services; their Goodies to Go offerings are quite extensive.
  11. Facilities: Should you require tables and chairs beyond the department’s holdings, If you need tables or chairs beyond what’s available in the building, please contact Facilities to place an order. Be ready to provide the information about the room/building, and have your KFS number available. If you need more information, please contact the Business Office or Karen Nelson (knelson@umd.edu)
  12. Land Acknowledgement: Available here. Text as of 2022.09.15: Every community owes its existence and strength to the generations before them, around the world, who contributed their hopes, dreams, and energy into making the history that led to this moment. Truth and acknowledgement are critical in building mutual respect and connections across all barriers of heritage and difference. So, we acknowledge the truth that is often buried: We are on the ancestral lands of the Piscataway People, who are the ancestral stewards of this sacred land. It is their historical responsibility to advocate for the four-legged, the winged, those that crawl and those that swim. They remind us that clean air and pristine waterways are essential to all life. This Land Acknowledgement is a vocal reminder for each of us as two-leggeds to ensure our physical environment is in better condition than what we inherited, for the health and prosperity of future generations.
  13. Enslavement Acknowledgement: Available here. 2024.06.19. We, at the University of Maryland, recognize and honor the exploited labor of forcefully enslaved people upon which the foundations of the United States and our institution were built. Enslaved people of African descent farmed, paved, maintained, and developed the land on which our university stands today. Through intergenerational resistance, leadership and a steadfast pursuit of freedom and justice, their descendants fought and continue to fight for a societal transformation in defiance of the profound injustices of the transatlantic trade, chattel slavery, convict leasing, Jim Crow laws, dehumanization and the caste system that permeates our existence. They desegregated and integrated our classrooms and now lead our university and Maryland Terps forward to achieving a better world. We are forever indebted to the unwilling generational sacrifices and stolen labor of the enslaved Africans and their descendants. Together, we will strive to atone, heal and uplift the unbreakable spirit and beauty of Black Americans.